Thursday, October 11, 2007

what is blackskimmerblog?

what is blackskimmerblog?

it is asking: what is this human experience? what does it feel like now? what has been our past journey? where are we headed?

two main features are: our large size, abstracts us from the swirling squaredances of molecules that earth is. and our sudden awakening to the intricacies and depths of experience that our tangled 20billion neuron brains are capable of has thrown us into fear and confusion.

these two drove us to imagine that we are ultimately unearthly spirits wrongly or at least incomprehensibly shackled to cracked corrupt bodies. we are enthralled by our ideas of mind, spirit, and we are repelled, bored by flesh.

[read notes towards mythology of the human journey and science]

but certainly the EVIDENCE plainly before our eyes is that spirits cannot live without eating other plants and animals. The EVIDENCE plainly is that we are polluting flesh on Earth.

and a curious development happened in European culture over the past 400 years. a group of men began the concerted effort to wrench themselves from intoxication with their inner experience and begin REALLY LOOKING, really being INTERESTED in the living presences outside of themselves.

and BOY, WHAT WE'VE FOUND!

roughly, in the past 150 years, what we've found are: 2000 different minerals, and hints at their modes of formation. We've catalogued so far, 2 million different kinds of plants animals mushrooms microorganisms. We've found that organisms are immense hierarchies of complexity from organism to organ systems to tissues to cells to organelles to macromolecular assemblies, to macromolecules to molecules to atoms to protons and electrons to the very equations of the universe.

We've begun to learn the creative abilities of atoms and molecules, basically, mud! we've begun to learn how simple energy flow through collections of molecules with simple rules causes dynamic order to occur. We've begun to learn the mathematics that gives us complex subtle behavior from finite simple rules iterated over trials of molecular bombardments...

We've learned that our own brains are an immense tangle of 20BILLION interconnected neurons. we've begun to explore what it's like to connect that many parts with simple rules and see what it's capable of.

we've learned the reality of chance, random input, which the ancients refused to accept, believeing all came from conscious purposeful mind.

we've begun to explore CAREFULLY just how our minds work, are they monolithic purposeful consciousnesses? or are they communities of interacting processes feeding on random input?

we've explored possibilities of creation of the wealth of 2million different critters by a processes of iteration of actions, choices, trials and errors, feedback loops among populations of simple organisms over generations. we've counted the layers carefully all over the Earth and have uncovered 3.8 billion years of living Earth history.

We've begun to learn to put aside our chauvanism and anthropomorphizing and respectfully ask the other 2million critters we share this life with: what IS your life like? what is YOUR experience of it?

[read complexity]

no longer can we put the creativity and love that has been the realm of God and human spirit in one box, and put dumb mud and flesh in another.

no longer must spirit be alien to this muddyfleshybirthingdyingsexing Earth.